Late last night, it was announced that Hillary Clinton is likely to clinch the Democratic nomination with 2,384 delegates. This historic moment places Clinton closer to the United States presidency than any woman has been before, an honor she has earned with both her 43-year career in politics and her command of the unspoken rules for women of power in her field—see: the permanent pantsuit and the unchanging abbreviated, pushed-back blonde haircut. These are the no-nonsense accoutrements that have kept the focus of conversation on Clinton’s work. “If she’s wearing a skirt, that’s huge news,” The New York Times’s Amy Chozick admitted to Vogue last month. Imagine, then, the headline frenzy that would ensue if Clinton were to, say, cut all of her hair off mid-campaign.
It’s a topic that has been deftly covered with the blackest of humor on HBO’s Veep, the five-season Julia Louis-Dreyfus–starring satire series. From presidential hopeful Selina Meyer’s right-on-the-money voluminous bob to her season three “rebranded” eyebrow-skimming pixie, the show acknowledges the very serious above-the-neck codes for female politicians.
A quick survey is proof enough that few women in positions of power, and namely in politics, have long hair. From Nancy Pelosi to Angela Merkel, cuts rarely ever graze a shoulder—a fact that did not go unnoticed by the show’s creators when designing Louis-Dreyfus’s look. “This is a powerful woman,” says Daniel Howell, her lead hairstylist on the series. “[The hair] doesn’t distract from what’s going on. It’s almost like a helmet ready to do battle. You have it done and don’t deal with it [again] all day.” For the swingy bob wig he uses to transform the actress, who often wears jeans and a long curly ponytail when she’s out of character, “half of my job is to make sure there’s nothing sticking out—nothing falling in her face or getting caught in her collar. That would be a distraction,” he adds.
It’s not the first time that Veep’s creators have addressed the gravity of such decisions with characteristic satire: In the show’s first episode, Meyer dismisses glasses as a sign of weakness (“wheelchairs for the eyes”), while the statement hat she wears in season three becomes a recurring joke as one of her most damaging decisions. Improbable as it may sound, such visual distractions can be the difference between winning and losing favor in real life. Howell points to Sarah Palin’s chameleonic hairstyles during her campaign for the vice presidency as an oversight. “Whether it was straightened out or curled, you were aware of her hair,” he says of the look that erred toward pretty or, still worse by Washington standards, sexy—a regrettable reminder of her beauty pageant days.
It should be noted here that the other side of the gender equation isn’t completely immune to the phenomenon—see: current presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s much discussed comb-over. And yet Veep exposes the prerequisite for female politicians to be seen as capable at their jobs, yet fully stripped of any sexuality from their personas. Even Meyer’s form-hugging Dior and L’Wren Scott power ensembles tow the line between appropriately flattering and gender neutral. It’s a point corroborated by Meyer’s closely shorn crop at the height of her presidential campaign, when she explains (in a deleted scene on HBO) that even the 10 inches she had before were “too sexy . . . people didn’t take me seriously enough as a result.” Her staff may have hated the haircut—but she’s still in the running for the presidency.